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Gettysburg and the Eternal Battle for a 'New Birth of Freedom'

Lincoln, describing the fight of July 1-3, 1863, showed the world what was at stake in a Pennsylvania crossroads town.

By

Allen C. Guelzo

June 30, 2013 6:35 p.m. ET

Among my great-grandfather's papers, carefully set down in his small, gnarled handwriting, is a copy of the Gettysburg Address. When Lincoln delivered the speech, my great-grandfather was 10 years old and living in Sweden, the illegitimate son of an aristocrat. That inconvenient birth exposed him to the haphazardness of privilege—for although he was raised, petted and groomed by his father's family, he soon understood that he would never have any real standing in that family or their world.